Van Halen, Foo Fighters, Iggy Pop Lead Humorous Tour Rider List

06/20/2011.

Band's tour riders can be just as much fun as the shows themselves. There have been many infamous tour riders over the years and Gibson posted their 10 favorites. Here are the top 3:

3. Foo Fighters: Foo Fighters riders are notoriously entertaining to read. The band once famously requested a variety of 'stinky cheeses.' They also request Gatorade in 'wacky colors,' and their taste in DVDs is relatively broad - with the exception of no Jamie Kennedy, Martin Lawrence or sports movies. A vegetarian soup of the day is requested because "meaty soups make roadies fart." Moreover, the Foo Fighters rider sums up the importance of the document in maintaining a sense of continuity for the band: "The silly items like gum and candy bars make a difference to these boys that are far from their families and friends."

2. Iggy Pop: For an Iggy And The Stooges tour, requirements included a monitor engineer who is "not afraid of death," as well as instructions from backline/stage manager Jos Grain for camera crews filming the show as unobtrusively as possible: "At a wet festival somewhere I once saw a guitarist being followed all over the stage by a cameraman and sidekick all covered, in bright fluorescent plastic sheeting, including the camera It looked like he was being stalked by a demented pantomime horse! I personally thought it looked absolutely terrible, and I speak as someone who believes that most rock and roll bands would be improved by the introduction of a pantomime horse." Grain goes on to warn that "Iggy adores breaking cameras, so really it's best not to get too close to him. Of course, I will be on hand to try and prevent him from destroying your equipment; unfortunately, there is only one person I can think of who likes to break cameras more than he does, and that's me."

1. Van Halen: By far and away the most legendary concert rider requirement was Van Halen's 1982 request for a bowl of M&Ms with the brown ones removed. Far from a mere flaunting of ego, this was actually a clever trick planted within the rider to raise a red flag if the staging requirements had been ignored by local crew. As David Lee Roth explained in his autobiography Crazy From The Heat, if brown M&Ms were found in the backstage area, it would be a good bet that some important technical aspect of the contract had also been overlooked (although a glance at the actual document casts doubt on Dave's story that the M&M requirement was placed amongst the staging schematics - it was actually within the catering menu between the pretzels and the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups). See who else made the list